Many times, a provider of web page content will also provide additional resources to help a user to understand aspects of the web content. For example, a help icon may be visually located near an aspect of the web content, and a user may click on or roll over the help icon to access help text that gives details about the web content. Such embedded help text may be displayed in a display element that is part of the web page and/or may overlay the web page content. However, help text that is embedded in such a manner is generally hard-coded into the web page, such that the content provider must edit the web page in order to change the help text. Updating embedded help text can be time-consuming and expensive.
At times, a content provider includes a help link or help icon on a web page, activation of which causes a help resource user interface to be displayed in a new window (e.g., in a new browser window showing a web page that includes information for help resources). The new window is distinct from the window that is currently displaying the web page for which the user is seeking help. Generally, such a help resource user interface organizes the help resources by topic, and the user can browse the help resource topics to identify a help resource that addresses the user's question. Further, such a help resource user interface may include a search mechanism by which the user causes a search for a particular term to be run over the help resources to identify help resources related to the term. However, this kind of presentation of help resources takes the user out of the context of the currently-viewed web page, and it may be cumbersome for the user to effectively find useful help articles.
It would be beneficial to provide a more effective system for allowing users to access help resources, where the system does not take the user out of the context of the currently-viewed web page and that automatically identifies help resources that are associated with the context of the currently-viewed web page.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.